Montney's unconventional development in British Columbia, Canada, is home to PD 868, the first land-based drilling rig in North America equipped with modular robotics technology to automate the pipe-handling process.
FAST FACTS:
- 105,000m drilled without manual connections
- 400,000m of tubulars hands-free (cylindrical components used in the drilling, completion and production phases of oil and gas wells)
- ~8,400 personnel hours eliminated from the rig floor
Instead of relying on floor hands and a derrick hand to handle tubulars when making connections, drilling personnel use two robotic arms on the rig floor and a third in the derrick to complete the work.
ConocoPhillips has been using this technology across several recent pads as part of a three-year collaboration with Precision Drilling.
The technology works by training the robots — through sequencing and movement so they can move as smoothly and quickly as humans — which means training the model and updating the code.
Currently, the coordinates are manually programmed, but the goal is a future where images can be uploaded so the robots can recognize where they are spatially and react accordingly. The focus is on efficiency as this work is fine-tuned.